Did Tirupati laddus include animal fat?

• Reports suggest that traditional ghee from cow milk, used in Laddu prasadams, may have been adulterated with fat from multiple sources, including beef tallow.
• A technical report from the Centre for Analysis and Learning in Livestock and Food (CALF) of the National Dairy Development Board found that samples of ghee supplied to Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams were found to be adulterated.
• The report found fat from soya bean, sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, linseed, wheat germ, maize germ, cotton seed, fish oil, coconut and palm kernel fat, palm oil, beef tallow and lard.
• This is the first time animal fat from beef and pigs has been mentioned by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Chandrababu Nidu, at a public forum.
• Adulteration of cow ghee with cheaper fat is an age-old practice due to its high cost.
• The state-of-the-art method in the dairy industry is the use of gas chromatography, which separates the chemical constituents of a sample mixture made up of organic compounds.
• For a ghee sample to be pure cow ghee, all five of these values must lie within a specified range that’s within a window of 3 or 4 points to 100.
• The analysis of fat in the Tirupati laddus found that all of the values (s1-s5) in both samples were outside their prescribed ranges.
• The presence of a ‘foreign’ fat can only be calculated when the’s’ values exceed 100.
• The report suggests that applying these methods to Indian bovines could require changing the’s’ values.